UPS (Uninterruptible Power System) is an important peripheral device capable of providing continuous, stable and uninterruptible power supply, and has been widely used in computer devices, business terminals, network devices, network servers, data storage devices, business support platforms and even the whole communication network. At present, a highly available power system usually includes four parts: 1) a highly available electrical architecture, 2) a highly available, redundant UPS system, 3) a power management system and its integration with an enterprise information management system and 4) protection measures for long time electric supply failure. Therefore, it is very important to manage the UPS in order to ensure the high availability of the power system. The management of the UPS can be implemented by establishing an effective UPS monitoring system. An existing popular approach is to integrate the management of the UPS with the management of the network, that is, to add the USP into the network as a network node by utilizing an SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) card. On the one hand, the device can monitor its own state during run time, making it possible to perform preprocessing for some faults. On the other hand, users can monitor the running state of the UPS in real time at each node of the network and take effective countermeasures.
A UPS monitoring system mainly includes an intelligent UPS, an SNMP card and a power monitoring software. The intelligent UPS can communicate UPS parameter states with external communication terminals through standard communication ports according to the particular data communication protocols. As a network management agent of the UPS, the SNMP card can get some information related to the running state, the device characteristics and the system configuration of the UPS to which it belongs. The power monitoring software is used to cooperate with the UPS for learning the working state of the UPS.
An existing standard UPS with an SNMP function is partially shown in FIGS. 1A and 1B. To install an SNMP card 2, a space within a UPS chassis 1 should be reserved for an SNMP card box/card slot 4 for accommodating the SNMP card 2. However, because the SNMP card 2 is only an optional accessory of the UPS, the prepared SNMP card box 4 within the UPS chassis 1 undoubtedly results in a waste of manufacture cost for the UPS chassis that does not require an SNMP function. In addition, because an SNMP power controller/control board is integrated into the UPS PCBA (Printed Circuit Board Assembly) 3, the integration of the unused SNMP power controller into the PCBA, to a certain extent, causes a waste of manufacture cost for the UPS that does not require an SNMP function.